Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome. What a pleasure it is to have him here. He is very proactive in respect of this entire area. I am delighted to see him pick up the mantle and do what has to be done. I was particularly happy to see him sign an agreement with our colleagues in Finland recently. My colleagues and I met him to discuss training in the cyber area. I hope that, in the very near future, we will see the roll-out of a cyber range, available to those concerned about the security of their systems, through an agreement with companies in Estonia, for example.

We had a cyberattack on the HSE. It is one of those things that can never be prevented, as the Minister of State and I discussed recently. The attacker has to get it right only once but we have to get it right all the time to protect against attacks on our systems. I am delighted to see work is being done on ComReg. I would like to see it seriously strengthened.

Cybersecurity and other cyber issues are now out in the open. Everybody has some awareness of these. We must be far more visible about the types of attacks that can take place. I experienced a very innocent one very recently, having signed up to a particular service through my Internet service provider. The first credit card number I put in was rejected, as was the second. Twenty minutes later, I got a telephone call from Permanent TSB telling me my card had just been used for a particular website. Twenty minutes after that, AIB rang me to tell me my card had just been used. I regard myself as someone who is highly aware of cyber issues and cybercrime, but it goes to show how easily one can be targeted.

What the Minister of State is doing here is well timed. As he well knows, the issue is always that technology is racing ahead of all of us all of the time, so the legislation will have to be extremely robust and flexible. There will have to be flexibility in it allowing the Minister to make statutory instruments to meet oncoming threats, for example. I am aware that the Minister of State has put much work into this and that the Bill has gone through the Dáil. I am going to go through it in more detail with some colleagues but I hope we will not delay it in any way and that we will get it through the House as quickly as possible.

The Minister of State has done good work on the National Cyber Security Centre. It is in place and staff are being employed. I am always against private operators in public areas but believe the centre, working in very close co-operation with private operators, is vital for this State, given the amount of foreign direct investment we have. From that point of view, I am really happy to see the Minister of State bringing this legislation on board. I am happy we are not the lagger in the EU. We are somewhere around the middle with respect to transposing the legislation, which is good.

The one thing that has saved us to date is that the multinationals here, particularly in the IT sector, have taken care of their own security. I ask the Minister of State, as someone who sits at the Cabinet, to consider a national intelligence service and director of intelligence for Ireland. We have too many agencies that operate within their own spheres; however, as far as I am aware, having spoken about this for several years, we have nobody dragging all the intelligence into a central area. Although the Minister of State’s portfolio is quite full, it would suit to have a director of national intelligence working in association with his Department. I would also like to see the National Cyber Security Centre moved closer to Government Buildings, where it would have direct access to the Taoiseach’s office if needed. Its current location is simply not good enough. National cybersecurity services in other countries all have direct access to the Prime Minister and relevant Minister. I would like this to be considered in the near future.

I do not propose to impede anything in this Bill and will support the Minister of State in any way I can. I thank him for attending and hope we can always work together the way we have.